Independent board says NSA phone program should endThe board’s conclusion goes further than President Obama, who said in a speech Friday that he thought the NSA’s database of records should be moved out of government hands but did not call for an outright halt to the program. The board had shared its conclusions with Obama in the days leading up to his speech.

Bank of America’s Billion-Dollar Judgement Day Is Only Days AwayMore than two years after a settlement was struck between Bank of America ( ) and 22 institutional investors over a passel of mortgage securities gone bad, a job promotion for the judge presiding over final approval of the deal means a decision will be announced very soon, probably within two weeks.

The World-Changing Truth Our Leaders Are Only Beginning To UnderstandJon Kabat-Zinn, a father of the mindfulness and meditation movement in America, traveled to Beijing in November to help lead a cross-section of Chinese leaders and thinkers in a seven-day retreat. Chinese government workers, health care professionals, academics and scientists attended the well-being workshops, but it was the presence of several Buddhist monks that most surprised Kabat-Zinn.

America’s most popular prescription sleep medication linked to mass shootingsA new report describing the bizarre and dangerous side effects of the sleep aid Ambien has once again raised questions about one of the United States’ most popular prescription drugs. In a story by the Fix, Allison McCabe chronicled the numerous cases in which Ambien has caused individuals to commit unsafe, and sometimes deadly acts.

Coming to an office near youINNOVATION, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swept aside by the mechanical loom. Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has displaced many of the mid-skill jobs that underpinned 20th-century middle-class life.

How Bank of America and Others Schemed to Exploit YouMy idea of New York, and by that I mean the controlling interest there, is that they sit back and look upon the rest of the country much as Great Britain looks upon India. Senator Henrik Shipstead, Minnesota, 1922 In the middle of 2011, Bank of America settled an otherwise nondescript lawsuit with the City of San Francisco for the paltry sum of $5 million.

Vertical farms sprouting all over the worldLeader: ” Fruit and veg, fresh from the skyscraper” URBAN warehouses, derelict buildings and high-rises are the last places you’d expect to find the seeds of a green revolution. But from Singapore to Scranton, Pennsylvania, “vertical farms” are promising a new, environmentally friendly way to feed the rapidly swelling populations of cities worldwide.

States may bind together to fight federal gun lawsAFP Photo / Emmanuel Dunand Lawmakers in Missouri are once again trying to nullify federal gun laws within the Show-Me State, and this time around they hope Second Amendment advocates elsewhere will join in their fight.

Bank of America: Not Stopped, Not Slowed, Not HarmedFueled by the Fed’s easy money policies and an improving economy, U.S. stocks just closed their best year since 1995 . Prior to the final day of trading for 2013, the Dow was up 29% when dividends are included and the S&P 500 32%. The market smiled particularly favorably upon the financial services sector.

Meditation transforms roughest San Francisco schoolsAt first glance, Quiet Time – a stress reduction strategy used in several San Francisco middle and high schools, as well as in scattered schools around the Bay Area – looks like something out of the om-chanting 1960s.